“That’s going to be hard for the fisherman,” Tiessen said from Wheatley. “That’s sort of a devastating cut for Essex and Kent counties and a substantial cut for Elgin County too.”

On the plus side, the quota for walleye is going up about 20 per cent across Lake Erie.

The binational Lake Erie Committee of fishery managers from Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Ontario recently decided the total allowable catch limits for 2019 based on assessments of how the two fish populations are doing in Lake Erie.

The walleye allowable catch limit across Lake Erie is rising from about 7.1 million fish to 8.5 million walleye in 2019. Ontario is allowed about 3.6 million fish but the commercial fishery won’t know exactly how much they can catch until that is translated into a weight, Tiessen said.